


Well-Adjusted

by trash4ficsaboutlurv



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, other character mentions - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 09:42:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8745295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trash4ficsaboutlurv/pseuds/trash4ficsaboutlurv
Summary: In which Steve realizes that Sam might not be the noble pillar of strength he's always imagined him to be.





	

Steve woke up in the middle of the night with a thick, dry tongue. He reached for the glass of water on his nightstand and remembered as his hand grasped nothing but air that he was staying at Sam's apartment while his own was fumigated over the long weekend. He sighed. Could he go back to sleep with a parched throat and a swelling tongue? More importantly, could he navigate Sam's apartment in the dark without knocking something over and waking his host. He had promised that Sam wouldn't even know he was around and Sam had smiled and said, "But I like having you around, Steve," in that way he had that made you feel as special as a five leaf clover in December. But Steve was pretty sure that didn't apply at – he squinted at the red, glowing digits on the alarm clock – 2:10 in the morning.  

He patted the right side of the bed -- unruffled, because he was such a still sleeper. His socks were rolled into a ball somewhere over there. He found them and slid them on. Sam didn't sleep with the heat on. He got nosebleeds when it was too hot and dry. When they had been looking for Bucky down in Arkansas, Steve had woken Sam up in their overheated hotel room in a panic because Sam had a stream of blood running down the crease of his laugh lines. Sam had teased Steve all the next day. "You thought I was dead and gone, man. You had called up the undertaker and the priest." Steve had rolled his eyes and downplayed his own terror. If Sam knew just how much it would've killed Steve if he'd actually been hurt, it would have betrayed other things, too. The real depth of Steve's feelings for Sam, feelings he had stuffed down into a tiny little box and buried and poured concrete over. But still those feelings throbbed palpably, like a tell-tale heart.  

Steve dragged one hand along the wall and held the other out in front of him as he walked down the hallway to keep from knocking into anything. He had been to Sam's apartment plenty of times, but never stayed over. It was remarkable the transformative power of the dark. Had that hall table always jutted out so far? When had Sam put a framed painting right outside the bathroom door.  

Steve blinked. The light in the living room was on. He glanced back at where Sam's door was, but Steve couldn't see if it was open or closed through the total darkness of the hallway. He glanced down at himself. Wool socks rolled up to mid-calf, basketball shorts, and a long-sleeved thermal. He wasn't going to strike fear in the heart of anyone right now. He crept to the very edge of the light and peeked around the corner.  

Sam immediately looked up from staring at a board game on the coffee table. He smiled sleepily. "Hey, Steve." 

Steve rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and tried to do something about his hair, which always stood up like a duckling's downy feathers when he got out of bed -- if said duckling had just had a low volt of electricity run through it. "What are you doing up?" he asked. The cold of the hardwood floors had already begun its insidious creep through his socks. "Is that Scrabble?" 

"Yeah," Sam said.  "I have my best games at--" He squinted at his watch. "2:12 in the morning." Dark shadows under his eyes belied his cheery, alert tone. The guy was exhausted. Steve watched as Sam studied the board in front of him and arranged the letter tiles on their little bench. He placed a word on the board and counted up his score. As he wrote it on the back of a receipt, he said, "I'm trying to beat my personal best of 618 combined points between two players." 

Steve rubbed his arms. How could Sam stand how cold it was? "Is that possible?" he asked.  

Sam shrugged. "I've never done the math. Don't want to find out it's not. What would be the point in playing then?".  

Steve frowned. "What is the point?" 

Sam raised his head and looked at Steve thoughtfully. If Steve hadn't given the exact same look a million times since coming off the ice, he might not have recognized it. Sam was sizing him up, deciding if he was going to give a short answer or a long one. Deciding if he could trust Steve with the key to one of the locked doors in his head. He sat back on the sofa and closed his eyes. "If I push myself," he said, face in seeming repose (did Steve detect a tired tremble in his voice though), "if I push myself until I can't stay awake one more second and then I stay up ten more minutes after that, I can sleep." He opened his eyes and smiled. "And the nightmares don't come. My brain's too tired to fuck with me." 

Steve's surprise must have shown because Sam laughed -- a brief, quiet little hunh of air.  A wry laugh. "I seem so well-adjusted," he joked. "Right?" 

Steve nodded, at a loss for words. How had he never known this? That his best friend had nightmares. He came more fully into the room. 

"Why are you up?" Sam asked. He had turned his attention to his other bench of letters.  

"Water," Steve croaked.  

Sam tilted his head toward the kitchen. "I should've asked if you wanted a glass before you went to sleep." 

Steve shook his head, even though Sam didn't see. He went into the kitchen. He could tell that's what Sam wanted – no – needed. He'd shared something personal with Steve and now he needed a moment alone to come to grips with his own vulnerabilities. Steve moved slowly. Grabbed a glass out of the cabinet above the sink and filled it with tap water. He gulped down the first cupful greedily, the exquisite relief unlike anything else. The body was a remarkable thing, he thought. Rewarding you for doing the things that would keep it alive. Thirsty. Have a glass of water and the satisfaction centers of your brain will light up like a Christmas in Las Vegas. Hungry. Have some food and you're swimming in a bath of feel-good endorphins. Steve leaned against the counter and drank his second glass more slowly. He wanted to avoid that sloshy feeling in his stomach.  

Sam had nightmares. It had been six years since his last tour and yet no reprieve? Didn't trauma have an expiration date? Steve had been operating under that assumption this whole time, that at some point his high-functioning depression would just mosey the hell on out of here so he could get on with his life. His therapist always insisted when he got particularly low that "it was to be expected." But Steve had sensed that at some point it wasn't to be expected. And he'd held Sam up as the guy who'd made it over. Sam was so many things to Steve, many of which he could only acknowledge obliquely, but hope, hope was a big one. Look up the world hope in Steve's mental dictionary and there was a picture of Sam laughing in the sunlight, looking every bit an angel on earth.  

His cynical smile as he said 'I seem so well-adjusted' condemned Steve, told him that Sam was not a symbol. He was a person. And Steve knew that; he really did. But when he was supposed to stand for freedom and equality and all the good of America, Sam was always hope, goodness, and the light in the dark. If people had taglines like Captain America, that would have been Sam's. And Steve didn't think he'd balk at it. He went into work every day and said (in so many words) to a bunch of vets, "One day at a time. It gets better." And then the unsaid, "Look at me" was there, too. The unsaid, "I wear khakis and go running every morning and I can talk about Riley without going catatonic and I'm good, and you'll be good, too."  

Is that what Steve had fallen in love with? The idea of Sam? He shuddered. No, that wasn't true. Steve loved Sam more than he had ever known he could love someone. He loved him selfishly and selflessly; it was complicated and the most simple feeling he'd ever experienced. It grounded him and made him feel weightless and free. He loved Sam so much he couldn't think of a single thing he wouldn't do for him. He'd live or die. He'd put down his shield or be Captain America until he was old and gray. Whatever Sam wanted, Steve wanted to give to him. Which was a lot to put on another person. And so Steve held back from telling Sam. He didn't want to burden Sam with his imperfect, smashed-and-put-back-together-with-visible-seams-and-bits-that-didn't-stick-right heart. He didn't want to put his all-or-nothing, smothering kind of love on Sam. 

And also he was scared to bits that Sam didn't love him back, not in the way that Steve loved him. Sam had said 'Man, I love you' plenty of times over the years. When Steve said something dumb or that time Steve held Sam's car up while Sam changed his tire because he couldn't find the car jack in his trunk or when Sam had been full of sangria after they tried that new Mexican place and Sam had just been staring sort of drowsily at him through the candlelight. That was one of those times Steve thought Sam might love him the same way he was loved. And his glued and taped together heart had felt rickety and fragile, blown about in the winds of hope. But there had been the sangria and Sam had laughed after he said it, which cut through any potential romance like a buzzsaw.  

Steve sighed and brought down another glass from the cabinet. He filled it with water and reentered the living room. Sam looked up from the Scrabble board.  

"Thanks," he said as he took the proffered glass from Steve.  

Steve sat on the sofa beside Sam, turned his body toward him but left plenty of space between them. "What are your thoughts on playing Scrabble with a novice?" he asked.  

Sam bit his lip. "Might do my self-esteem some good," he admitted. "But you have to be up in four hours." 

"So do you," Steve pointed out. 

Sam nodded distractedly as he set new tiles on the board. "I'm almost finished this game," he murmured.  

"What's the score?" 

"308-277." 

Steve whistled. "I'll be lucky to get 100 points." 

Sam didn't answer. Steve leaned forward to read some of the words.  

"Zygote?" he marveled. "What does zeugma mean?" 

Sam set the last of his tiles to make the word taxes. He scribbled his score and tallied the points. "I can't remember it right now. Learned it in English class twenty years ago. Some rhetorical device." Sam yawned. He folded the board and let the tiles fall into the seam before he effortlessly slid the letters into the bag. Steve would have said that was a two person job. One person to hold the bag open, one person to hold the board at the right angle, but Sam made it look easy on his own.  

Sam thrust the bag at Steve and Steve rustled out seven tiles. OURWAET. Workable.  

They played several words in silence. WATER. VATIC. JUGS. WUZ.  

"What the fuck is wuz, Sam?"  

Sam shrugged. "It's in the Scrabble dictionary. You can check if you want." 

Steve shook his head. He glanced at Sam. Sam had shaken himself awake two or three times already. Steve ached for him. His own body protested being up at this hour, but he ignored it.  

MOTIF. DEMIWORLDS. BOOTH. SPOTLIT.  The difference in their scores widened to an embarrassing degree.  

"Do you, um, do you want to talk about it?" Steve asked. "Or..." 

Sam grimaced.  

"You don't have to," Steve hurried to say.  

Sam reached over and patted Steve's knee and Steve could just about hear him say with that teasing smile in his voice  _Calm down, Cap. You haven't scared me off_ _yet._ He said that sometimes. He'd said it during the fracas after they found Bucky; he'd said it when Steve asked him to come help him pick an apartment and then panicked because it had sounded too -- Steve didn't know. Too  _something._ And Sam had just laughed and said  _Calm down, Cap._  

"I just want to help," Steve said, "If you think I can." 

Sam nodded and closed his eyes again. "It's the same dream every time," he said heavily. "I mean, it's changed since the beginning. But the awfulness hasn’t. It used to be a real simple one. Horrible. Awful. But simple." He spoke as if he had to go somewhere deep to mine out every letter. Like diamonds beneath the earth, each one precious and hard to access and the going was dark and slow. He pulled his eyes open like he was lifting a thousand pound weight over his head. He stared at the Scrabble board. 

"It was Riley. Falling. Not creative at all. It's like, come on, brain. This isn't a hamfisted movie with Great Symbolism. But it was effective. Riley. Falling. Over and over and over. Just that every time. But then I guess my brain got inventive. Maybe thought I was getting used to that particular image, that it wasn't cutting me deep enough." Sam glanced up at Steve. "It was, though. Cutting me. I never got used to it. It hurt like a bitch every time. Like losing him all over again. That same --" Sam took a deep breath. "That same visceral hurt." He dropped his head into his hands. "Visceral's a good word," he said. "I give myself little word goals for the week. Try to put a particular word on the board every night. I even play when I'm not...when my brain isn't...I play against my sister on the Scrabble app. Visceral was on my list last week. Couldn't get it. Almost did, but then Sarah put  _meatball_ down where I needed the A. And yeah, she got a 50 point bonus for using all her tiles, but meatball is the most inelegant word I've ever—Visceral is good in meaning and sound and Scrabble point value." He exhaled and slumped back into the sofa, slouching.  

Steve touched Sam's shoulder and Sam tilted his head to rub his stubbly cheek across the back of Steve's hand. The prickle went all the way through Steve, a ticklish, not-enough sort of sensation. Steve took Sam's gesture as an invitation and scooted close enough on the couch to put his arm around him. Sam sighed and rested his head on Steve's chest. He smelled like his cologne and laundry, which Steve ranked among the best smells in the world. There was something citrusy happening, something peppery, something woodsy with the cologne. And then the freshness of laundry detergent. Steve was shit at describing things, but it was a scent he had come to associate with laughing and love. He inhaled deeply. 

"You can go to sleep if you need to," Sam mumbled. His voice vibrated through Steve's chest. "I've hit that, can't-stay-awake-one-more-second wall." 

Steve smiled. "That means we gotta stay up for ten more minutes." He rubbed Sam's arm. "I can stick around ten more minutes." There was more he wanted to say, but he clamped his lips down on the words. He also wanted to brush a kiss over Sam's brow, tell him to sleep, to rest, that somehow Steve could keep away any monsters from within. "Keep talking," he said instead, "if it helps." 

Sam drew himself closer to Steve and sank down a little further on the sofa. "You're so warm," he murmured.  

"You keep your apartment so cold," Steve pointed out. 

"It helps," Sam said. "Not just with the nosebleeds. It helps me stay up when I'm out here and then when I'm in bed, under my covers, it helps me fall asleep." 

"I wish," Steve said. He paused helplessly. "I wish this didn't happen to you, Sam. I wish you didn't have to--" 

Sam shook his head. "It's okay. It's not always...It hasn't been bad like this since, I don't know, must have been three years ago was the last time it was too bad." 

"Do you know what triggered it?" Steve asked gently.  

Sam nodded, but when he spoke again, it wasn't to explain. "The dream changed about a year after Riley died. Then it was any and everybody falling. A girl I saw on the street. My nephew. My mama. My best friend from elementary school. A college girlfriend. Falling. And me up there watching. And we're always in my high school gym for some reason, but the ceiling's way up so they can't survive the fall. And I can hear it when they hit the ground. It's like the sound that a basketball makes on the court, but then there's that squelchy sound, too, like a meat patty when you smack it on the counter. I can't watch basketball anymore, because it makes me think of bodies hitting the gym floor in my dreams." Sam shook his head. "Crazy what your brain can think up, huh?" 

The fierce protective instinct in Steve's throat kept him from saying anything, but he nodded.  

"If I'd known it was gonna be like this -- I got a bit of a surprise last night and it never comes once. It's a hailstorm of ugly before it scoots off to regroup – if I'd known, I would have told you to go to Bucky's or Nat's. I didn't mean to make you stay up with me." 

Steve took Sam's hand in his and squeezed. "Sam, you're allowed to bleed on me. Always. You don't have to go it alone. Isn't that what you're always saying?" 

Sam laughed. "Don't listen to anything I say in my therapist voice." 

"Therapist you is so smart, though." 

"Therapist me is a know-it-all asshole." 

 "Yeah, that's how I feel about Dr. Hyun sometimes." 

"How are things with him?"  

"Good. How are things with Dr. Campbell?" 

"Good." 

"I'm assuming you talk to her about..." Steve trailed off.  

"Yeah," Sam said. "I thought they were good and gone though, so ... I used to try sleeping pills, but they just made it hard to get out of the dream. I couldn't wake myself up and I just had to sit in that ugliness until it got good and ready to let me go. Meditation and yoga did fuck-all. (Danny can kiss my ass with all that inner peace bullshit from tying yourself into a pretzel). My sister would stay up and talk to me, but then she had Remy. Can't do that to her. And then Rhodey married Monica and moved so far away." 

Steve only just kept from saying, "What about me? I would have come running, flying to your side!" But what about him? Steve had probably been running behind Bucky when Sam might have needed him. Or trying to fix the mess he'd caused with the Accords. Or getting into arguments with Fury until it turned out neither of them was right and there was some middle ground they'd skipped over because they were both so damn  _used_  to being right. Or he'd been mired in his own troubles, a fog so thick he couldn't see an inch in front of him and Sam had been a very hazy sun in the sky that he'd stumbled toward when he could, but more often than not he couldn't.  

Sam hadn't run to him because Steve hadn't been available, hadn't thought he needed to be available because Sam was strong and Sam was fine and Sam was okay. When had he done that? Put Sam in this box labelled 'STRONG; DOES NOT REQUIRE SUPPORT'? When had he turned out to be the world's shittiest friend? 

Because here Sam was, curled into his side, fragile and tired and keeping himself awake with games of Scrabble and frigid temperatures, and all with a sad, little smile. Steve wanted to punch himself right in the face. Better yet, he wanted Sam to do it. He hadn't been there for Sam. For all his 'I'd carry Sisyphus's boulder for Sam' rhetoric and hypotheticals, he hadn't been there. But that ended here. That ended right this very fucking moment. He was going to be so there Sam would be begging him to go to his own home. Sam would be pinkie-swearing he was fine before Steve would stop plastering him with love and attention and care and support. Steve was going to read every book in Barnes and Noble on how to be there for a friend going through it. Because Sam seemed to have an intuitive knack for it. He'd call Rhodey and say "I was worried about you" and Rhodey would say that he'd actually been having a really shit week and was so glad that Sam had called. Steve had heard one half of these sorts of calls since the beginning of their friendship. But who called Sam? When was Sam on the receiving end of those conversations? Maybe everyone had put Sam in a box labelled 'STRONG'. Because his smile was so dazzling? because he was even-keeled and responsible? because he was always running to the rescue for someone else? 

It was almost laughable how much Steve and Sam had in common in that way, and yet no one was surprised that Steve was the walking wounded. They nodded and said, "That makes sense. Guy got some tough breaks." Was it because Sam was a better actor? Because Steve's particular traumas were so unusual? Because he was Captain America? Because he was...white?  

That last one wasn't something he would have thought about before meeting Sam and then Monica, Rhodey, Luke, Misty, Claire, and Colleen. Sometimes he'd hang out with them in New York and they'd have these rich, complex conversations about race that completely blew Steve's mind, that inverted the colors of the American flag, trampled the amber waves of grain, and twisted him up with so much guilt he could hardly stand to be in the room with them. He was still learning  _and_  he was still so blind to it. His whiteness had never been an entity to him. His whiteness. The phrase itself was still unwieldy and strange, which Colleen had pointed out was part and parcel with the privilege of being white. It was left unexamined as a phenomenon.  

"Your whiteness makes you inherently sympathetic, right, moral, courageous, etc., etc., until you do something so devastating that you're torn from that privilege." 

"Like what?" Steve had asked. 

Colleen laughed. "I'll let you know when I figure it out. So far, white people have gotten away with everything." 

Was Sam's strength something that Steve had put on him because of the 'strength and resilience of black people' trope.  

"They say we're strong and resilient – hell, we say it because it's all we can say when shit hits the fan – but they say it so they can go on treating us like shit and ignoring our needs because 'we'll bounce back.' 'We gonna be aight.'" Monica used her hands as she spoke, smacked the coffee table, laden with the remains of their Chinese takeout. "Well, I don't want to be aight. I want to thrive. Collectively. I want us to thrive. And we're not going to do it pretending like every time they stab us in the back, our 'black girl magic' and 'black boy joy' is the ultimate healer. We're going to do it by taking away the goddamn knife." 

"God, I'd vote for you," Claire said admiringly and the others had all agreed. Monica rolled her eyes and demanded someone hand her the last crab rangoon. 

"Sorry it always gets so 'I have a dream' when you hang out with us," Sam had apologized as he and Steve took the Amtrak from New York back to D.C. 

"I like hanging out with you guys," Steve said. "I'd be the same bumbling idiot I was when I came off the ice if I didn't have you guys. I'm mostly surprised you let me hang out with you." 

Sam smiled. "I vouch for you. And you're pretty good about shutting your mouth. Lot to be said for a white guy who doesn't feel the need to chime in when people talk about race. Not giving you a trophy or anything, but it's pretty damn rare." 

Steve looked down at Sam now and realized he was sound asleep, his face soft and relaxed. God, he was beautiful. Steve had met celebrities with poreless skin and cherry red lips and hair so perfect it could have been airbrushed. He had met Thor, an actual god with long blonde hair, blue eyes, and biceps the size of your average person's thighs. And Sam was the most beautiful person Steve had ever seen. By a long shot.  

Steve considered his options. He could hold Sam for the next four hours while he slept. He could leave Sam on the sofa (he'd grab some blankets from the hall closet to pile on him). He could carry Sam to his bed. He could wake him up and send him to his bed under his own power. He could stay with Sam. Steve knew as well as anyone that sometimes you just needed a body to hold on to when things got rough. And how long had he himself gone without anything but the most incidental touch? 

Steve slowly and delicately rearranged Sam and himself so that Sam was resting on Steve, back to chest, between the V of Steve's legs. Steve leaned back as far as he could to reach the throw blanket draped on the armchair. He pulled it over Sam and tucked in the corners tight. Between his own furnace-like resting body temperature and the blanket, Sam wouldn't freeze. Steve let himself kiss the crown of Sam's head (don't be creepy, he said to himself quite firmly). He leaned his head against the back cushion of the sofa and closed his eyes. The weave of the fabric was comfortable and familiar. He had fallen asleep here before, crashing while in the middle of watching something with Sam, woken up with the waffle print on his face and his duckling-meets-electricity hair every which or way. But never here with Sam. Sam's weight on Steve's chest was comfortably heavy and his deep breaths moved Steve like the moon moves the ocean, a soothing, tidal sway, until their breaths and pulse were in sync and Steve was pulled, pulled, pulled out to sea, where it was dark and quiet and peaceful. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I know I usually end with my two babies explicitly and overtly together, but this didn't feel like the time for it. I didn't want to write the 'Steve's love saves Sam from his mental illness' narrative, although sometimes I very much enjoy the wishful thinking of that story line as a person who has to deal with some dark brain shit from time to time too. 
> 
> Trust and believe that in no world that I have or will ever write are Sam and Steve not destined to be together and in love and happy. It's a fixed point in all timelines and universes. I don't make the rules. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Also, I miss getting prompts if anyone wants to shoot me something on [Tumblr](http://imafuckingreverseracist.tumblr.com/). I can't promise to do all of them (based on personal preference and life stuff, but I'll never know what you want to see in the world if you don't tell me. :D
> 
> Also, I am pressing publish on this at 1 in the morning and I should definitely wait to proofread it in the morning, so if something is disgustingly violently grammatically wrong, just leave me a comment and I'll redeem myself with a quick edit.


End file.
